Page 132 of For Cowgirls and Kings

“It’s not that you’ll miss me?” He moves to the edge of the booth, like he’s going to get up and walk away, so I raise a hand to stop him, shaking my head. “I’m working on it, I just haven’t had enough time. It’s a much bigger job than I even expected. I don’t want her to pause her healing for me though either, and if space is what she needs, then she can have it. But I’m not letting her go. I’ll never let her go again. I love her.”

“What’s a bigger job?”

I just shake my head. “I can’t say yet. I’ll tell you when I have it figured out more.”

His knuckles rap against the table before he stands. The girl's loud chatter cuts through the restaurant once more, and I join him. Before they reach us, Gus leans in. “I know you do. For what it’s worth, she deserves to have someone as good as you.”

The truck’s full of the kind of quiet that happens right before a storm—full of static and unspent energy. My heart drums against my chest, and even as I tell myself to calm down, I can’t.

The gates of my estate finally come into view, and I slow to allow it to open. The wheels begin to squeak, but I barely hear them over the roaring in my ears.

And then Dale’s hand, which I note is covered in a clammysweat, wraps around my forearm. “Mateo, wait.” I remain facing forward, unable to look at her. “Please, look at me.”

I shake my head, biting my cheek hard enough to draw blood. “Why?” I ask, still not a hundred percent sure what I’m asking—I’ve felt this moment barrel toward us all day, and now that it’s here, I feel completely unprepared to let her go.

“I need to go, for me.”

“It’s not you, it’s me, right?” I hate that I’m not making this easy for her, but the hurt and anger pour from me. Not at her, but at the circumstances standing between us. I want to be the one to give her everything, now and forever. But even I know there’s some things I can’t give her. There’s healing only she can give herself.

I’m envious of it.

“Don’t be like this Mateo. You know it’s not like that.” There’s hurt in her voice and my shoulders sag.

“I know, I just don’t want to let you go.”

“I don’t want to go,” she whispers, and my heart cracks further.

“But—”

“Listen, I’ll never fully heal here. Being here, with you, it’s been a fairy tale. But a fairy tale is just an escape from the real world, and I want to rejoin the real world—I have to. If I don’t, then they won. If I don’t, everything I’ve ever fought for, it was for nothing.”

I finally brave a look at her, and there’s only unmasked pain and grief there. There’s a million things I want to say, a million things I want to tell her, but I won’t.

This truly is about her, and her needs. And even though it feels like carving my heart from my chest, I have to let her go.

“I’m keeping the cameras at your house, to make sure you’re safe from the third brother.”We’ve still never found him and it eats me alive.

“No, Mateo. You can’t put cameras at my house again. You can’t put them at my job, or the grocery store, or anywhere else someone might find me. Besides, I’m safe now. And I’m stronger too. You have to let me go.”

“I don’t know how,” I plead, and she reaches out a hand, cupping my cheek.

Her eyes glisten with unspent tears, “You had to know this was coming. You’ve been there for me, through the absolute worst and I’ll never be able to tell you how grateful for you I am. But I have to return to the real world if I have any hope of actually surviving what has happened. As happy as I am here with you, it’s not real. I have to, or I’ll shrivel up and die.”

“We belong together, Dale.”

“We belong in each other’s lives, Mateo, as friends. But not together, together. You need someone who wants to share this incredible life you have with you, who belongs at fancy hotels, and running casinos. But that’s not me. I don’t want that life.”

Her words cut through me like a blade. I need more time. Because no matter how challenging it might be, her and Iaremeant to be together. There’s no one else in this world I can imagine spending my life with, enduring the endless triumphs and trials with.

“Dale, I love you.” And at that, the first tear tumbles across her cheek. She doesn’t wipe it away, but instead scrambles over the middle seat to sit folded in my lap, her head on my heart.

“And I love you, Mateo.”

FORTY-SEVEN

MATEO

June 17th, 2025